Australian Casey Stoner Has won a wet British Grand Prix at
Donington Park to chalk up his fifth victory in eight races and
move 26 points clear of Valentino Rossi in the MotoGP
championship.
Rossi, the former world champion, could not match the 21-year
-old Ducati rider's speed on the slippery Donington circuit and
finished off the podium in fourth place.
The Italian's Yamaha team mate Colin Edwards was second,
11.768 seconds behind Stoner, with Australian Chris Vermeulen
third for Suzuki.
"I didn't really know what to expect at the start of the race,
whether it was going to bucket down after we started and really
soak the track or actually dry out like it did," said Stoner, who
made his grand prix debut at Donington as a 125cc rider in 2001.
"So it was a bit of a gamble, I suppose," he said of his tyre
choice. "Then about half way through it started to really dry out
and the bike started to spin a lot so I was just trying to smooth
everything down so we didn't destroy the tyre before the end of
the race. That was my biggest fear."
Texan Edwards had started on pole position and Stoner's success
maintained a season-long jinx for any rider starting in the top
slot, with the last winner from pole dating back to Japan last
september.
Stoner, now on 165 points to Rossi's 139, recovered from a poor
start that pushed him down to seventh at the end of the first lap
at a circuit he had denounced earlier in the week as far too
slippery.
The Australian, who hails from Kurri Kurri, New South Wales,
slotted into second place after five of the 30 laps however and
took the lead on the 16th when Edwards, the former World
Superbike champion who has yet to win a MotoGP race, ran wide.
"I came into the chicane and braked and it kind of locked up a
little bit," said the Texan... click on ozzy go to the full story